Of Pacing and Prisoners
by OldButYoung
Summary: Skye has a theory that Jane has a disease named romantic myopia, and Jane intentionally contracted it as a cover for the monsters in her mind. A look inside the blessing and curse of Jane's author touch, and how Jeffrey helps her cope with it. (Language and Drug Reference)
1. Chapter 1

There are benefits and disadvantages to sharing a room. The pros of sharing a room with Skye is there's never-ending monster protection — her fierce stance and objective reasoning make sure that there's no bogeymen in the closet. Also, Skye sometimes picks Jane's room up out of compulsion, so Jane has an easier time of cleaning her own room, and finding her assorted objects. And, If Jane feels like reaching out, Skye is always willing to start a lighthearted conversation sprinkled with kinds words and sincere compliments hidden under layers of deep and snarky sarcasm.

However, Jane hated sharing a room with Skye in her dark moments, such as right now.

Her alarm clock displayed 3AM, the witching hour in which only those who are plagued with passion are awake. Jane is one of those sick victims, and she's sitting on her bed under the comforters scribbling furiously as a form of medicine. She was writing the same phrase over and over in endless circles because the physical task of writing was currently drowning out her emotions. Continuing with this menial task prevented her from falling into the abyss of tears, and her continual cadence and rhythm of scratching down certain letters such as a looping cursive "Y" or something similar actually lulled Skye to sleep. When Jane was younger and not as resourceful, she'd cry a lot in the night, and Skye trained herself to be a light sleeper to try and comfort her sister in distress. Skye lulls into a deeper realm of unconsciousness when Jane writes, though, because Skye knows that's Jane's escape.

At seventeen, Jane has been feeling on edge lately. She feels anxiously apprehensive about the fact that she's going to stumble upon a really big and scary realization about herself. This realization must have something to do with her infamous quotes, too.

"'Oh, Jane, always the dramatic one.'"

'Please keep your emotions to only a small tidal wave today.'

'Can you stop thinking with only your heart for like five minutes?'

'You need to desperately tone down your affections.'

'You're coming on too strong for only a friendship.'

'I don't want to date you.'

I don't want to talk about feelings.'

'Stop being so dramatic! You're delusional!'

Alas, she's not Delusional nor crazy. She's oblivious from being mercilessly trained in the art of optimism from her family, but now she's realizing darkness exists too, and in overwhelmingly large quantities.

Skye has a theory that Jane has a disease called romantic myopia. Jane intentionally contracted that disease as a cover from the monsters in her mind.

 **A/N: Alright my second published story woo! So this may be a pretty unpopular theory about Jane, but I've always seen myself in her, which is why I'm passing along lot of my own struggles through her. Also, sorry for the cliche ending at the end of the next chapter, but I thought it brought closure, so what can ya do...**

 **Anyway, please read and review! I love tips and discussions!**


	2. Chapter 2

"Jane! Glad you could make it!"

"Yeah, whatever," Jane mumbled as she walked into the filthy din nonchalantly, flinging her bag into a corner and slumping on the vomit-green couch.

She elaborated on her grumpy and disgruntled mood as she pulled a lighter out of her pocket and promptly lit the joint her companion had passed her.

"Skye's getting on my goddamn case about chasing boys. Like really? You practically drool anytime Jeffrey comes over to visit. We get it, you're both in that awkward stage when everyone knows you're in love but you two, and I know you're caught up in your angst and all that, but don't be such a hypocrite! Jeffrey is a family friend, not your sole property. I hardly got two words past him…"

She cut off her rant with a long drag to prevent her from getting legitimately angry. Smoke sat in her lungs, heavy with false sweetness and broken promises of lightness and confidence. Smoke filled her insides, pushing the words that were previously swirling in her stomach out of her mouth. Smoke seeped into her heart, slowing it down for once. She continued talking about her week as she routinely took drags between paragraphs; David continually listened as he got stoned out of his mind. Jane liked him completely out of it because he could then comprehend the neglect and rage and weight Jane felt. She believed only people who were on drugs could actually understand emotion — it infuriated and

fascinated her at the same time.

"I need music. You have any vinyl requests?"

David looked over. "We're doing vinyl today? Let's go angsty and make it Arctic Monkeys."

"We've listened to that approximately 12 times David, pick something new."

"Whatever you say, man."

"I'm choosing Dark Side; the musical waves will do me some good," she replied as she bent down to put the ancient but classic album on the turntable.

"I can dig," he said as he lit up his trusty crimson red glass pipe, nearly burning his shoulder length Severus Snape hair in the process.

She crossed the room in a fluid walk, waving her arms in time with the strange beginnings sounds of the album to grab her Lennon sunglasses. She loved those things, as they were a birthday presents from Jeffrey, and were her symbolic mark between her Beatles-loving self and non-loving Beatles self. She turned quiet and pensive as the album continued on and she spun slow, off-balance circles as if she was corkscrewing down into oblivion.

"You know, I really hate getting high — believe it or not it clouds my creativity and sharpest thoughts. However, I hate the heaviness of cigarettes and Iantha could smell them on me a mile away, and I need to smoke something to fill my lungs with something other than breaths during hyperventilation and desperation."

"Whatever you say, man," David half-concurred, still trying to comprehend her statement.

"Man? I'm sorry, is this 1969?" Jane snapped, her patience growing thin in the presence of deadbeat David. Nobody could hold more than four minutes of conversation with him before growing the impulse to swiftly punch him; Jane felt that tendency as well, but nobody could hold more than six minutes of conversation with her aside from David, so she just made sure she'd be doing all the talking when they were together.

"Says the person wearing Lennon glasses."

"At least it's from his solo career in the '70s, and it's now retro, favored by the punk pariahs of the present."

"Whatever you say, man."

Once he started repeating himself, Jane knew it was her cue to leave. She stopped her pace for pondering, and grabbed all of her stuff, taking off her sunglasses because the feeling of getting lost in Psychedelic Floyd was over.

"I gotta go. People expect me to go do something productive with my life."

"Whatever you say, man."

"Okay, you've literally said that sentence four times in the span of 15 minutes," she snapped, whipping her head around to look at him with pure disdain.

"Whate —"

"DON'T," Jane finally interjected, holding up her hand in fearsome warning. "Even try you giant waste of nothing," she concluded as she spun towards the door.

"Um excuse me, that's the pot calling the goddamn kettle black."

She stopped in her tracks, feeling the insult sink into pores and start conjuring her loathsome egg. However, she forced herself to keep moving on, and she did, silent tears running down her hot face. Who knew a meaningless insult would spur on her next bout of egg.

Egg is a pretty funny term to mean something so dark, but Jane couldn't explain her bouts in any other way. It was gooey, perturbable, sulphuric, possessive, and impenetrable. It oozes down, covering her fair skin and rendering her motionless, and the seeps into her veins, poisoning her blood and speeding up its flow through every part of her body. That's why everything felt hot, it's why her head pounded, it's why her fingers shook, it's why her skin was flushed.

She couldn't think, let alone try walking towards home, so she just collapsed in a fit of sobs on the curb as circles rotated in her head. It's okay, it's an empty street, so it's not like anybody saw her and rushed to help. Jane just sat on the curb, knees tuck up to her chest, arms wrapped around her shins, and tears staining her denim-washed jeans as her eye sockets were forcefully pushed into her kneecaps. She felt the turkey vultures of sad emotions pick apart her functioning self bit by bit until she couldn't find herself anymore.

Her youthful view of the world that was filled with the overwhelming emotions of awe and inspiration felt fantastic. It felt amazing that she could capture the rarest and smallest of moments and turn them into something so beautiful. But, as she grew into adolescence and traded her old-fashioned family values for modernity and teenage pessimism, her abnormally large capacity for emotion became filled with darkness and undeniable sadness, and she couldn't fix it. She didn't even know where to start fixing it. Skye would tell her to just reason it out, that emotions and negativity weren't that important, that realism prevailed over all. No matter how much Jane tried to emulate Skye and her independent attitude that attracted so many interested people, Jane was blessed and cursed with a different innate sense of emotion. Rosalind would coax Jane through every bout of panic attacks she had, but she would stop there; she'd mother Jane and give her love and affection and support, but she wouldn't know the first thing about what Jane was experiencing or what was "Wrong with her." Telling Batty, Ben, Iantha, or Daddy would crush their innocent constitutions, and Jane could never live with herself if she spread her sadness to the people who carry the most joy.

Maybe she'd start with Jeffrey; talking with Jeffrey seemed like a good enough idea to calm her down and get her towards walking home again. Even if she couldn't channel the main beliefs of Skye, she could copy Skye's menial task of counting. So, as Jane walked towards Gardam Street, she counted the sidewalk cracks. In between spottings, she looked down at her shoes with slight appreciation — enough love to put a sad half-smile on her face. Her yellow converse were infallible shoes. She loved her first pair, and loved them even more when Hound threw up on them the first time they drove to Arundel. Why did she love them even more? Because she had begged her dad to get another pair, and because she experienced so many beautiful things at Arundel, she had to continue her shoe line to keep the memory alive. So now, here she was, five years later, wearing those same electric yellow converse, even if it meant them clashing horrifically with her denim-wash light blue jeans and red shirt that read "Let Your soul Stand Cool and Composed Before a Million Universes." The sing-song prose of Walt Whitman has seemed to ironic to Jane lately that she's convinced he's mocking her.

Anyway, she arrived at Gardam Street to witness a rather intriguing wrestling match on the lawn. Skye and Jeffrey were both on the brink of adulthood, yet the two were covered from head toe in grass stains and autumn-dewed mud, Skye engaging a rather strong headlock on Jeffrey as he floundered his arms about and yelled out nonsensical cries for help.

"Jane! Thank heavens you're here! I have a multi-headed Hydra attacking me with one of its hundreds of tentacles!"

"You uneducated fool! Hydras have heads, squids have tentacles!" retorted Skye, somewhat sounding like the villain Jeffrey was making her out to be as she struggled to pin him to the ground.

"You have a horrible deformity sprouting from pure malice then!" he said as he miraculously escaped from the headlock and pulled the reverse on Skye.

"You're…beating…me…doofus!" Skye blurted out between gasps for air as she grew exhausted from the lengthy match.

"Yeah how do like that, little witch..how about a taste of your own medicine," he jeered as Skye slunk in his arms from exhaustion.

"Ha Ha victorious for once! How ab — oh SHIT! JANE!" Jeffrey put in one last plea for help as Skye full on elbowed him into the ribs and smushed him onto the ground.

"That'll teach you for once, nimrod."

"Christ Skye, what did Jeffrey do this time?" Jane asked, bewilderment in her tone mixed with some Rosalind contempt.

"He started a tickle war."

"My god" Jane snorted as she rolled her eyes and walked inside.

Jeffrey sprouted up with a flourish from his supine position and brushed off any dirt he could from his hopelessly sordid t shirt and jeans, and jogged over to catch up with Jane.

"Hey Jane-o, I got your text from earlier, wanna go walk into Quigley Woods now?"

"Um, okay, I guess there won't be a better time. You sure you don't want to change or shower first?"

"Eh, I'll make you deal with my dirt and stink in retaliation for your lack of intervention."

"Fair enough," she replied with a hint of smile, and the two started out to the Woods.

"So what's up Jane-o? You've seemed kind off the past couple times I've come to visit."

"Do I seem off to you now?"

"It's hard to tell; you're not off from the past few days, but you're off from the last Arundel visit."

"Well that's good to hear considering I'm high right now and I really don't want anyone suspecting because everyone will blow their tops off."

Jeffrey looked towards her with surprise, slight disappointment, and confusion. "Why? I though you hated drugs and people who did them?"

"Well," she began, losing an internal war with herself and taking out a joint she stole from David's house earlier. "I was curious, then I liked getting high, and then I liked just smoking something. Please don't judge me, it just calms me down after really fucking long days."

"Jane," he started, turning to look her in her chocolate eyes, and noticing for the first time how dead-set and jaded and abused they truly were. She must've seen some horrible things in just the past couple months. "I will never judge you. You can trust me 100% I swear. Troubled Artists' Family Honor," he joked as he stuck a fist for Jane to stack hers on top of.

"Thanks," she sighed as she lay hers on top and finally gave into a smile and relished in the small frozen moment.

"Now, pass me that joint will you."

"Jeffrey! I would've never expected!"

"Yeah, that's what everybody fuckin' says," he responded with the steel-edge tone of a sixty-year-old man who'd been smoking his whole life, his words muffled by the joint in his mouth as he lit it with Jane's tomato-red lighter. "You know," he started before pausing to release the smoke, "I really hate getting high too, but I completely understand your want to just smoke somethings because it teaches you to stand back and just breathe. It's a good exercise in perspective."

"Wow you hit the nail spot on," she relented as she took a couple drags herself and stared out into the woods.

The two sat on her infamous author's inspiration rock, with was stuffed with intricate and intimate objects in the most unexpected of niches, and has faint doodles from sparkly gel pens on its light gray smooth surface. The October sunset glowed a bright orange in the woods, and Jane couldn't help feeling to grateful for the fact that she had someone to actually enjoy this moment with.

"Jeffrey, can I ask you a question?"

'Sure thing, sweetheart."

"Did you ever resent yourself or the world for not having any true friends growing up?"

Jeffrey pulled back in slight shock at the unexpected question, but he eventually started thinking about his answer and choosing his words carefully, because Jane had some very important intention behind that question. He laid his palms out behind him and shrugged his shoulders slightly as he lay back to look up through the tops of the pine trees, stringing the last of his answer.

"Of course I did. I resented my controlling mother, I resented the social class I lived in, I resented the colossal house I lived in alone, I resented all the people I was forced to socialize with, and most of all, I resented myself. You said it yourself Jane, I was a prisoner, trapped in loneliness I almost couldn't bear. I questioned why the world did this to me, why I didn't even have a father, let alone a fellow friend my age. That's why, you when you merry band of eccentric sisters first came my way, I never wanted to let you go. I've put my heart and soul into you guys, because I know I can completely trust you, and you never let me down."

Jane turned to him with her faint half smile in appreciation. "We love you too, J," she responded before looking straight out into the woods and slowly finishing her smoke.

"Fun fact, joints were called mezzirolls in the 1930s when they were peddled out on the corner streets of Kansas City."

"Incorrigible you and your endless Charlie Parker facts."

Jeffrey only shrugged in defense.

"Well," Jane started, contemplating her words to try and portray her intention behind her first question. "Unlike you, I haven't met my own Penderwicks. Nobody wants to deal with me, end of fucking discussion. I'm forced to deal with what I feel on my own, and I don't think I can keep struggling alone like this. I'm going crazy trying to find people who will help me in times of need. My friends still think I'm thirteen and infallibly happy and still acquiring puppy-dog crushes. My friends just tell me 'oh you're fine, stop being so dramatic,' when they find me panicking in a bathroom on a sleepover. My friends excommunicated me because I told them they weren't supporting me, and they just completely flipped out, and threw me out instead of dealing with their selfish selves. People are too ignorant to notice, too entitled to learn what's real and what's the facade, and too selfish to learn the difference. They underestimate me, they abuse me, they take advantage of my heart, and Skye just goes and does the protective bidding. I love her to death for it, but — "

"But you need to assert yourself without her help, I get it. She does that to me too because it's one of her best ways of showing she cares. Maybe she'll learn though; she's a quick study and ambitious."

"If only her constant ambitions didn't cloud her ability to sit and love."

"Yeah…"

"But I just haven't, no, I just can't find the person who'd want to deal with me. I'm unpredictable, overly emotional, irritable, full of rage, sad, guilty, inferior, subordinate, unconfident, paranoid, susceptible to panic attacks, plagued with a shame complex, and so so so fucking depressed. I'm wearing myself away; I just need to disappear into the wind so people would have one less basket case to talk about, and one unlucky person wouldn't have to stick with me."

Jeffrey looked on with utter empathy and understanding; maybe he hadn't felt her predicament on her level (after all, he was only a musician and not a writer), but he just saw so much of his former self in her.

"You're a prisoner, and everybody around you is a guard instead of an inmate. Well, let me tell you, I'm you're fucking bunkmate, and don't you forget it, okay?" he finished with a smile and the hope that'd she'd understand that he'd still be there even if he is wrapped in Skye's life just a little bit more.

"I am a prisoner, and my vultures are the wardens, and my friends are the judges, and the mass of high schoolers who walk down the hall with mob mentality forms into one giant officer who arrested me in the first place. I'm so heavy. Heavy with chains and guilt and smoke, but I want to reach the lightness of a bird, of a butterfly, of a Batty."

"Ah, Batty, she found her savior before she contracted the plague."

"I thought I did too, but it turns out people and writing are more forced tasks due to history rather than actual forms of enjoyment."

"Jane, you don't have to look so down upon yourself. You're a writer, spin the words. You're mysterious, haunted, in want to start a new adventure, dedicated, full of heart, and overflowing with care if the person who's willing to step up to the challenge wins your trust."

"Jeffrey, what if there is no fucking person!" she exclaimed, jumping off the rock and starting her pacing and finicky fidgeting. Her fingers waggled in a faux-typing motion as she searched for the words to spell out, and she felt the uncontrollable impulse to ran her hair through her unruly curls over and over and over and over and over and over and over.

"You pulled a Shawshank when Skye took a liking to you. You broke out of prison, and ended up on the most idyllic of islands with the person who cares about you most on the world. You have a girl with flowers of love in her eyes as she stares at you. You are the kind of duo that authors write novels about, that musicians compose about, that artists paint about, that directors film about. Why? Because emotion is there, it's overwhelming and it's so angelic and positive and full of hope the world has a collective sigh and inspired visage over it. At your fifteenth birthday party, I sat in the corner with one of your friends — I don't remember his name — and I created an impromptu eight-minute soliloquy over the picturesque Skye and Jeffrey creating a series of moments that will go into a montage set to your underdog favorite song as you look at her and realize that there's nothing better you can receive in life but her. Your friend left like three minutes in, and I was left to watch and analyze and feel both happy and slightly envious. I want that so fucking bad; I love you and Skye so much, but you inadvertently yet constantly rub in my face the thing I want the fucking most in the world. I can hold this spectrum of feelings myself, I need someone to carry the burden before it crushes the wind and rest of my soul out of me."

Realizing her true distress, and noticing the first sign of tears in her firewood eyes, he hopped off the rock as well to clasp his hands over her shaking hands and reassure her through a gaze full of love, support, empathy, and experienced spirit.

"Jane, I want to trust my words, and I'm going to tell you there is a fucking person. That fucking person will have to climb a mountain or two to really get your full love, but only that one true person will come and take and overcome the challenge. It may take months to years of friendship first, but they're coming. They're coming, but they've just heard your call of distress, and they have some training mountains to climb before tackling you and the wonderful enigma of your personality. You're uncannily observant, and scintillatingly caring. You're sincere and utterly educated and more. You're everything, and somehow more, because you have that one-of-a-kind Penderiwck spin." Jeffrey finished his beautiful words of encouragement with a light tap on the end of her nose, and a thorough bout of sincere eye contact.

Jane could only stare back in appreciation. She was finally spoken speechless to her great relief — her mind and vultures and complexes had powered down for the first time in two months and she couldn't be more grateful.

Jeffrey and Jane stood there in the woods at sunset on a San Francisco October day, and the Orange glow had shifted from burning hell-fire to marshmallow-roasting embers.

"Jane, have you ever been kissed for real?"

"What do you think, doofus?" she chuckled in response, slightly taken aback by the question.

"Well, if you haven't and since I have an inkling you might go on making bad decisions for awhile before you meet Mr (or Mrs.) Right, I'm gonna make sure the person who kisses you for the first time gives a genuine damn about you and isn't gonna leave for years and years to come, okay?"

"Alright, dork," she laughed.

"Jeez, you're picking up vocabulary from Skye now; maybe I'll recant."

"Aww!"

And as Jane was just about to retort some odd phrase about how Skye and her are actually siamese twins on opposite ends of a dichotomy, Jeffrey had lifted up her chin and fully kissed her square on the mouth.

It wasn't long, it wasn't hot, and it wasn't life-changing for either one, but as they broke away, they both realized how much they needed that.

"Instead of blood brothers, we're saliva siblings."

"Jane, you're gross!"

"Aw c'mon, you know you love me," she smirked as she shoved slightly into him as they made their walk back to Gardam Street from the woods, basking in the first signs of dark, and listening to the cadence of crunched leaves as they made their perilous journey from the no-man's land of lost souls back to a loving home.


End file.
